Bill Trenchard
@btrenchard • 8,676 subscribers
Partner at First Round Capital
Videos
If I had to pick one founder every early-stage builder should study, Filip Kaliszan would be near the top of the list. He’s not on X, he rarely gives interviews, and Verkada doesn’t really chase headlines. But I’ve learned a great deal from him ever since we first partnered together, all the way back to his first company in 2008, and again in 2017 when First Round was lucky enough to lead Verkada’s seed. When the Verkada team first started out, you could buy high-end cameras with cloud-based software to protect your home, but options were lacking and outdated in enterprise. Just under a decade later, they’ve hit 30K+ customers, $1B+ in annualized bookings, 2M+ devices deployed and a $5.8B valuation in a new round led by CapitalG. But whether it’s hacking together Raspberry Pi cameras to build the early prototype in 2016 or figuring out how to apply advances in AI and computer vision to physical security in 2025, Filip’s product building philosophy has remained remarkably consistent (and effective): he’s a student of the problem. “If you're willing to do the work, have the customer conversations, get on the plane and get out of your bubble to see how customers are using different solutions and build a picture of what will work for them, it's more of a well-defined process than it is a guessing game.” Filip gets at more of this idea below where he walks through Verkada’s path to PMF in an interview he did with us last year. Massive congrats to Filip and the entire Verkada team on this very well-deserved milestone today.
Bill Trenchard30,143 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
Imagine if we could contain wildfires before they spread. Hard to think of a more pressing problem than giving our nation’s firefighters the world-class technology they deserve, which is why I’m incredibly proud to back Stuart Landesberg and the Seneca team as they take on this challenge. The need is so clear here that you don’t even have to see all of the stats to know it’s a massive issue. Wildfires have a devastating impact on our communities, as we saw in L.A. earlier this year. While fire tech is growing, it’s still a surprisingly small category given the magnitude of the problem. When a fire starts, it spreads exponentially, so every second counts. Seneca’s fast-response aerial suppression drones launch autonomously and leverage AI to support and supercharge firefighters in situations that were previously unsafe, inefficient, or impossible to reach. Stuart is a hard-charging and extremely purpose-driven 2X founder (previously ran Grove Collaborative). He’s assembled an incredible group to help him tackle this problem, including Nick Foley, Bill Clerico, Adrian Aoun, and David Glazer (CFO at Palantir). Already working with fire agencies in four states, the team is making quick progress and ramping up production to ship in 2026. More on Seneca’s story in a great WSJ writeup below.
Bill Trenchard17,072 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
Seek out the hard things. It’s so much harder for somebody to come in after you when you decided to go hard early. That was Jake Stauch’s biggest takeaway from his years at Verkada. It’s a lesson he’s applied relentlessly Serval, whether it’s building enterprise features and a full platform from day one, or choosing to go after ticketing, even though it’s an existing category with legacy players. As a result, he and his team have built a product that’s genuinely many orders of magnitude better, automating repetitive IT work for Perplexity, Clay, TogetherAI, and many others. My partner Brett Berson had a great conversation digging into other lessons that have shaped Jake’s unique approach to Serval. He has some really interesting takes on the future of PMs, how they’re using FDEs, and the specific hiring bar he needs candidates to clear. Full conversation below. Worth watching if you're building in enterprise or thinking about how AI is reshaping existing markets.
Bill Trenchard10,422 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
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